So the SXSW conference took place this March and a bunch of interesting things came of it, not the least of which were comments made by Matt Cutts, the Google guy in charge of the webspam team. He said that basically, Google is going to change the Googlebot to put less emphasis on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and more on great content. So to those webmasters that are wearing the black hat of SEO: You’re going to get your come-up-ins.
I have always said that: “There’s no sense building a website that can’t be found by Google.” So when I build sites I try and make it easy for the Googlebot to figure out what the pages and the site is about. I make sure the keywords and tags are in the right place, there no or few errors in the code, and everything is as obvious to the Googlebot as possible. Basically, this is white hat SEO. Content is where a great deal of keywords are found, but that should be made for the reader with not as much emphasis for the Googlebot.
With the announcement of upcoming changes to the Googlebot, I think there’s a new frontier on its way with sites that are more about educating rather than selling, and are more about helping instead of just a bunch of advertising. I think I like this new Google world of helpfulness, it’s not all about the dollar after all.